Chapttr 9 -

TOOL FO'R AN EMPIRE

TuMCBN, ALG.BRIA, HAS ALWA\IS been proud of its links to
Europe. Just east of the Moroccan border, the small cit)ls
Spanish-style architecture, flowing fountains and leafy streets
give it a distinctly Western flavour. A university town with
about thousand students, Ttemcen has a long and
vibrant history as one of North Africa's intellectual centres. Its
cultivated atmosphere, combined with attractions such as a
twelfth-century mosque and an ancient citadel, also made it a
popular tourist destination, at least until civil war broke out in
Algeria in the 1990s.
We visited Tiemcen in 2002 t6 attend a UNESCO
sponsored conference on plurilingualism. The gathering, organ
ized by a French organization called Le Monde Bilingue I The
Bilingual World, was the first international event to be held
in Algeria in a decade, and we were the fust group of foreigners
Tlemcen had seen since the beginning of the civil
in France, our Algerian friends were a1anned by our plan to
attend the conference. Tourists had been kidnapped sporadi
cally over the previous decade, and killings were still going on. _.
in major cities.
A French colony for XJO years, stillbeari the scars, Qi,l'
civil war, the fallout from. its violent .war of iridependencdromlf
France, which lasteCf .. a:reiult, the:countr)f
refuses to admit to its French heritage, at least?Officially:.
many former French colonies, it did not make French one of
its official languages independence: :
TOOL 10& AN IWPial 19)
The heritage of French colonialism is complex, and
nowhere more so than where language is concerned. We met a
young fundamentalist in nemcen who said he refused to
speak the language of the colonizer and went as far as pretend
ing he only spoke English (though he spoke it with a French
accent). But thef hOstillty towards France. doesn't translate
t 'rejection.of Preiichh\mong;the fOnner c.olomesr
.Algmnetiillly;liu 'tlle"higbestpropoition of French speakers,
<tc&"llle tliat hardly .:'even'' a iecond' languagt
diue .. Pieiich-fluently, eighty. perl
ind mostofthe TV chann.els are'
everyone: has som,e understandingof it.
The fact is, despite how painful Algeria's colonial history
was, the country is a striking example of how successful the
French were in spreading their language during the second
colonial push, which lasted roughly from I8Jo to 1.960. In many
' ways the second colonial era was the second great historical .
opportunity for Frencli.
itidozens of countries ind'T
wed' in: the Indian .Ocean; t
Middle East; :the Caribbean and
succeeded f
eoth&::nditr':an<f more, j)oWerful countries faileti.. All European
countries participated in colonialism, but France to
p.rve out li vast empire, second only to
the Frendillaifloated over.a.good
of Indocllilia; ., sbition of Iildii; 1
fhu,uwath'of,the Pacific, islands in the-Caribbean and a chunk
of&bth Pilriee 'also expanded its sphere of

beyond. 'Mexico was

failure of the: second
evtn.:there .if minaged-to attract the elites: Belgium's' poSsessions
19-4 THI STOU OJ JIUHCH
in
added to the extenston of a French lmguage empire on WhiCh;;in
a way, the sunstillhasn't-set.
Why and how did Franee 'and
Germany and the 'Netherlands.faileCii .and where France had
failed a century earlier? had 'Strategic
advantages such as direct access .to the sea prrixhnitY' to
Africa. They also highly to.
the end of the nmeteenth century France was falhng behmd 1ts
neighbours demographically and Belgiunihadvery fewnatutaJ-
resources left to fuel its economy. BothcoiJntriei wercrlooking:"
for ways to compensate :for these .weaknessea. ln.- the second
colonial push, France adopted a more coherent approacli th'an
it had in the first. It also had remnants of the first empire-for
example, Senegal and Pondicherry-Ptat it was able to put to
use as bases for the second push. l'o
Neither the French
0
rior the Belglw were- particulatrY.
in how about

" a mlSSlO.n
. ( .. -+Mf)- for
colonaahsm, whsch was based on the prsnctple of asstmdatton!':'
to so-called British paternalism in order to show the
merits of either approach (depending on which side
on). In our opinion, this is nothing more or less than historical!
revisionism. There was nothing better about-the ,Urirish
hyrsfcn than there was about ,the Prcnc:b .iyi!izjng
They were the same thing: a pretext fo.i=-do'minating
exploiting foreign peoplet. All
for own ends; In 1885 Georges Clemenceau, France's leaderl,
during the First World War and an outspoken opponent of
expansionism, nailed it when he said, "To. speak of civilization
is to join hypocrisy to violence.,.
TOOL oa AN IIHI U I'J
colonial powers, performed ;.some ;.
to trY the ugly face of ;-
th .. called the elites'they
'k lfiiibili.(the 'evolve]) The colonial administ.ra-
cille<l bidiglnll{(from. intligbie,
given their-own .special jwtice.
de authorizect.: (l
trllflailford(forced laboWY. and -s.o ""
Africa the broken French spoken by the inilfgmes was
called petit nlgre. Another racist term, more colloquial but st.ill
heard .today, u bougnotd, a Wolof term that originally meant p
b/4dc 'Person. The French used it pejoratively to refer to the
/willis in Senegal, and today apply it to Arabs. ,.,
But thel'eal 'difference in French colonial techniques was j
..
abOut:iti hr -fit Fre"cl-, fk ,bji!Clt'f! ;f '
0 ( .....
belic:Vecl,.or:aaid o.
More
than any other colonial power,:"the'.Freni:h were'explicit; if not
adamant, educating. their colonial
French . .So the:'.French language
building. :r
.....of course, 'Often :&.'gap -between ilie official ..du.t
Senegal; Congo, Indochina and.
i'l!ebitttSlf;'Frencb:.lnd(Belgian:educatiotfpolicies were unevenly
In western Africa, particul.adyin
in the nineteenth century, while
there was {rirtually none until'
education was the work of the
miSsionaries were involved;
1
in many, it
was a combined effort. All in all, the F'renth policies failed tQ
e'dur.t.t'Cl. Butthey succeeded in. training .an .elite. of
so:callc!d '/tiolNI1 who: would act as colonial. auxiliaries Jor the
.
1,6 THI HOllY 01 flliNCH
French and take over after
the trademarlc of French to}onial .
On the whole, 'France's effoit'to' echiC?f:te,lti
jects does not explain how it:succeededili ,Pteidlni .thdan-
guage so widely dwirig the second<
.. . ... . . .... . P. . ... .
reason was thaf1,2s OppOsed to

this time sent settlers
Caledonia became a .. French Fieilthi,'fdiY
forty thousand convicts-four times the humber'of.settlers -.q.d
engag{s they had sent' to
about 15o,ooo Europeans (mosdY:
still a considerable
who had settled in Algeria by the"i9jos ,..ercfunumerouhs tlJ''
the setders in all the' othe.r French colontes togethef. Not sur-
prisingly, the second :colQnial
French diin'die. fiti{arar . . .,.
Algeria was France's first' 'colony, 'and ilie' fitit 'Afiicin territorf. l
officially declared a colony European eotmtrf. While many
historians consider this the that sparked the second
colonial push, the French hadi?t re.ally iefout:to.create :'U
colony. For centurie.s, Algerian pirates had been in the habit of
capturing European boats alongthe Meelitemneancoast;"anctf
selling their Christian crews u slaves:"''Betfteft"i8xj
British, American and Dutch fleets tried to-puta stop':to"tlil'f
practice by attacking Algerian fleets .andbomD'arding .
but it was the French who finally. :Kinr
Charles X, France landed and seized.
King's successor, Louis Philippe,
into a colony, partly aa an attempt to
the French monarchy and partly to' aplte Englandi' whlch hact
taken the hotly disputed Egypt 'Out' of;French .. hands:ip"tlJe
first years of the centwy.' The moment he took power, Louis
TOOl 101 .N IWPi ll 1'7
Philippe beian laying siege to Oran and the rest of the
Mediterranean coast. :tn:sa.u.Prance aetup&,c:Olonial severn
poueaaions-
{General Government .of

Then, roittlii!liis'tHime: Pl"ln'ce
iendiii.i' settlers .to'a partly because
there were settlers anxious to
still largely. a' peasant countey"ifi
wii: 'eijianding i:and
by
legendary
were
in fishermen
and peasants; half were French and the Spanish,
Italian, Maltese and Conican. In the following
ployed Parisians and Alsatians poured into Algeria. Bj't187,6

winegrowers whose vines had been
wiped out by the phylloxera epidemic in 1878 fled there looking
for new land; Algeria was famous for its wines.
This .contact between French soldiers and' colonists. and
a second.wave ofArabicisnis.intO
.. to. the 1pf.dle Cnisadei (see
chapter 1). But the Prcnch::bad borrowed scientifid!'
dldjteehnical: terJD,a .the Arabicisma ! 1"?
iflto:.Jhe Janguqe in:th6nineteenth centwywere aU
were the first to borrow from Arabic, using
the word btUt/4 (from btUd'tt, pack.saddle in the Algerian dialect)
for their military lcit. Bled (the country's interior} took on a
pejorative serue in French, referring to an insignificant place.
And the Algerian 14bib (healer} became the soldier's 1o11bib (still
used in France for doctor). Other borrowings included choii.Ja
-e
(a little bit), mabo11/ (crdckpot), ltif-/Uf (the same) and no11ba
{party); all are used commonly in French even today, while
others, including wbah and raJ; over into Bnlllsh.
of other borrowings come from this period,. many
food, including the most famous, coiiScous, which is well otf its
way to becoming a national dish in France.
Almost from the beginning of the colony in Algeria, the
French dreamed of replacing Arabic with French. French
administrators declared French the colotly's official language
and set about looking for ways to get Algerians to learn it/ One
of the early plans was to pay children two plusa ..
meal to attend French school. The scheme fa1led.tln r850 the
government created a school for sons of tribal Chiefs
but this also produced few results. The mainobstacle wasthe
fact that Algerians already had a tr.adition of educatiolfr Before
the conquest. up to forty percent of Algerians Jeamed
and write by studying the Koran in Muslim schools, so:few
North Africans bought the argument that' the French were
bringing them civilizadbn. Meanwhile, the French settlers,
who relied on exploiting undereducated as labour,
were not too enthusiastic about applying the Paris education
policies, which they considered tOQ
Nevertheless, the French in th'dr;education objC9.:
tives. In the J.8sos the . colonial g'6Vemment:'treated
schools where students learned Arabidn themoming
in the afternoon. By I86j only a few thousand students. were
enrolled in them. From 1879 on, the French goVernment begittl:to
create French !Jdu, co/JJgu and schoOls' of law 'and medicin!tin
Algiers, and a full French school sYstein was created in
the Muslim Algerians strongly resisted -sending-their children.\to
the schools, and by 1914 only five .pert:ent of children attende.d
French schools. The native inhabitants strongly opposed inter
marriage as well, the other main means of assimilation.
'$
TOOL fOa All UHIU 199
Meanwhile;:hchveyer, were .assimilating almost
a:ettlen in Algelia. All the children of
'f:Bwopeallt.wentto.Frc:nch schools, as did the Jewish popula
lti6lil\ISCJ:tl{.immignntahd -indigenous. f!'he overall result was
that, by..l914t'':roughly, a million inhabitanu in a. total popula
,. tion!of 45 million ;spoke French as a mother tonguef three-
quarters. were Europeans, Algerian Jews and other assimilated.
'f'oleignen. and one-quarter were Muslim
In spite of the failure of the school program, French made
rapldprogress. though for the least noble of reasons! With the
government,- European settlers.bad.been ... ..
.. ovc:r.the best of Algeria!s. agricultural-lands, and
Algerian 'employees'
WhCfhao
1
to>p-eik:tife:b()ss's.language.' The French govenimeni
of France .in 't848, With each Frericll
... iespohlible 'fOr .its own affaiil. so 'French. became-
. Ifwas .also ;the language..-of
'mllitiiY''emC:ei : Mmye:Muslims .. ptrformed militarY duties:
tRtc!\11f:.,.tl)t:i PiCriclii1,soft'mment made oblique prdmisei .tO-'
ol\lt&lft.them :cttize.nahip in exchange for these special
The overall result was that,

The '"Dumber of French settlers was considerably smaller in the
rest of Africa, but there were so many colonies that it would be
futile to try to give: the details of how French progressed in
each. case of Senegal, however, is a good example.
WJialmu:gon'-'down in history. as :thi:'fust.French.less6n
town of Saint; Louis', ' s.enegal;
.legenduy.:French matructor;
When he arrived and opened
a school that year, only a few thousand French people were
living in Senegal. He began studying Sencgatsmost important'
('
THI JTOaY o PaiNCH
local language, Wolof, and even went on to publish the first
French-Wolof" described the atructurt
of the lan a
Jean Dard eveloped a new approach for teaching Frenai
,, outstde o France called the mutual method or mllhokliJ
1rad11aion translation method. !pe approach was teath
children to read and wnte 10 their native language, Wolof,
,.r4-:;., .l then to learn French by It was a very modern"'atia

very effective method, and Dard was said to have achieved

remarkable resulb with it. unfortuQately he had to return to
France in 1810 for health reasons. He came back to Senegal in
1831, but died a year
Had Dard'i methods taken root, the future ofFrenchin
Africa might have been different. But ;his collea3"CS and sue '-

cessors favoured the /direct method,j which cQnaisted. of

teaching French from *Scratch to people who didn't even know
how to read and write in their own language-'ard's meth6d
required teachers to learn Wolof, and that was too much worle.
so the French in Africa just used the same teachinl methods '
J they used on schoolchildren in France. In Senegal this meant
banning Wolof from the. schootl'To do this; 'the French went
::::;;;J.t1 as far as taking children away from their families and sending
them to French schools in distant childftJr:'Wee
Y. mystified, upset and alienated by the. whole proc:wr
. f': Until the r8sos, when Britain stopped :disputing Fii:nce'l
-; 0'1,. IV"- dominion over the colony, there was ..
speak of in Senegal. !That was when Senegal's first
General Louis de Faidherbe, put one in
today the cultural capital of is
as a result of his actions. Faidherbe .ns:a:hiodemite't-. When
he arrived in 1854 there were between twelve thousand'and fifteen
thousand French people living' in the colony, but little eco
nomic activity. He the c:olony[byf
TOOL r oa Alf I WPi al 101
. . . . . .\
lritiOdutini'peanui plantations (albeit based on forced labour). '-
of Saint-liOuis, Rufuque Dakar: ,
between 1854 and. defined
t.an(hpuf.irit<f!praetice;;a system to train an 'Afrieancolonial .,.

achoof for-ii)ns of Chiefs in t8s;ltlts JA.

matidite;t\wa; functionaries who would coUaboti.te
t'!i'wititciFrancC:, in8uding' administrators, teachers and riier-
The schools later spread to Goree, Dakar and Rufisque. _
a local infantry:force, the fatriou's
1

lYtough many of them came from Upper ('
1
ott:GU:i and. Mali), who numbered 180,000 by 1914 Ir::-
was of Frenchlfication, as they had to
:r.apeak:to .their offic:era in French. :
:Paidhi!tbe'1 'plan worlctd qu.ite well, and the bwgeoniog
Senegalese got' the message that French was the key to social
t>rt>motion. to build on this momenrum by using
, different mwuiei AJ Amadou Ly, professor of literature at
Cheilch Anta Diop University, told w; :rrhe Senegalese
tb.e1J!#hcli1t010nizi..othet African countries . We the auxil-
iaries of colonialism. :1'916 France c:Xtended citiZenship to.
tt'Jidditi:. 'O'fi01ir'c:Oloiiial bases: Dakar. Rufuque. Saint
01
people.in,these four tw.ns were refemd.. to as Ia-

in 1_9.46, theseur::dected represen-
tatives to the National Assembly in Paris. DiiiiDS.the 'coloruat uJ


trtrrm'iltl69ti nteni.Wiica to studY at.
f.Ddieven
After the Second World War, France established
scholarships to enable young Africans to pursue higher .
in France. 1hei.6rituntYeraity in' weatem .. Africi, the Univenity\-
Cheikh Anta. Diop),-opened in 1950f
101 THI non or rauccH
The results were less impreuive among the rest of the
Senegalese, few of whom learned: French. In I90J the Prerich
government passed a decree to in place a system of secu-
lar primary education in its African colonies. The education
system had three goals: to educate the masses, to establisli
French culture in Africa, and to train indigenous staff arid
assure the rise of an e:lite in the colQnies: In 19u there were
13,500 boys and 1,700 gitls in French-language schools in West
Africa. But the results of language acquisition were
weak. In 1925, across French' West Africa, children still left
school barely able to read or write. They learned only a few
French words, often without und-erstanding their meaning.
After 1925 the French introduced village schools. The idea was
to single out the children who had more aptitude for learning
French, and send them on to regional schools. By 1945 the
number enrolled had jumped to 94,400, but the numbers in
French Equatorial Africa remained
The teaching of French never overcame some basic prob;
lems in Africa. First, the Frensb simply never spent enouglr
money on schools-a mere six percent of the colony's
at the most, was devoted to educatiodt According to French .
colonial doctrine, colonies were supposed to be financially self-
sufficient. In addition, there wasn't a of popular support for
colonialism in France, so budgets were Because pf. this
_..pb,- mixture of colanial doctrine and finaneial considerations,, the
French didn't invest heavily in infi'istructure;and that worktci'S
L tx.v against education. France also continued to rely heavily oq, ..
( 1 missionaries to teach Frencht The overall result cviii
"'( at the peak of France colonial efforts-just before"=he
."' J'\41.($ 6o . d d . . h fift ..
19 s 10 epen ence Movement-no more t an een percen.,
of African children went to a FrenCh schooli and this was a
threefold improvement over the rate from fifteen years earlier.
Education rates were slightly higher in Algeria-up to twenty
TOOl. fOR AN J MPIU 10}
percent at the peak-and a bit higher in Tunisia and Indochina ..
And, as Professor Pascale Barthelemy of the University of Paris
VII argues in an article on the question, although France
tripled the rate of schooling in French West Africa between 1945
and the end of the 1950s, only four in a hundred could con
tinue in a secondary school."
Teaching methods were a major stumbling block.
. cOloniat i
. . t one point they tried to put a teacher training school 1
in pla,ce, but they never managed to develop a satisfactory l
for teachinl Pre.nch aa a aecond lanauasc. Not aurpria
ingly, they never found a way to motivate Africans either. The
objective was a steep one, considering that after 1791 it had
taken the years to establish universal education
in their own country. It is easy to imagine how disinclined
young Africans were to learn a European language when their tc
' teachers -insisted on using foreign references. In Senegal we ,/II
met people old enough to remember textbooks that began (.;
with the famous phrase Nos andtres Its Ga11/ois" rour ances ""
tors, the
Mass education in the colonies might have been more
efficient had the French better understood, or at least better
defihed, their purpose. In France schools served educate
citizens by instilling the values of the Republic and teaching
them skills to make them employable, and then singling out
the best and brightest for elite education. But in the colonies,
aside from training an elite of auxiliaries, it wasn't clear what
the French were trying to achieve, or why they applied the
same education scheme as in republican France to a popula
tion who had no rights or citizenship. As in Algeria, many
French settlers in Africa objected to the idea of educati.ng the
inJiglnat-mass education is a dangerous to a dominant
class that needs to keep natives in their place. The problem
104 l'HI lfOIT Of fliNCH
was that the settlers were the ones who were supposed to man
age the program. So, in a way; the whole scheme was destined
to fail.
The case of the Belgian Congo shows this problem in
even more vivid terms. The Belgians were nof interested in
teaching French. They tended to educate students in local
African languages and favoured technical training rather than
providing a general education. They feared that if they created
an elite, it would rise tJp one day and'demand independence.
By 1910 only ten percent of' the 'schoolchildren in Belgian
colonies were learning French. The' teaching of French there,
as in the colonies of France, was done the ineffective
"direct" method.
French made more progress .in the Belgian colonies than
Flemish did, primarily because it became the language of social
promotion (as it was in Belgium). But. French wouldn't have a
large presence until after the Second World War, when the
Belgians made a systematic effort to organize school systems. AJ
a result of the Belgian preference for technical education, when it
btcame independent, the newly formed country oflaiiC'(Belgian
Conga) had only four native univr.rsity graduates.
The most cost-efficient agents for teaching French were, by far,
the missionaries. Decades, in some cases centuries, ;before
European powers began to officially claim colonies, missionaries
had !>ten travelling to remote lands to establish their presence
and convert pagans . .Among the European pOwers, France was a
leader in this work throughout the nineteenth century, sending
missionaries to build schools and hospitals and teach French in
French West Africa, Indochina and the Pacific islands. In fact,
France sent more priests, nuns and monks into foreign missions
in the nineteenth century than any o.ther European country. In
1900, twenty-eight of the world's forty-four missionary societies
TOOl. fOI AN llltlll IOJ
were French; of the seventy thousand missionaries active in the
world, fifty thousand were French.
In the nineteenth century, France's attitude towards the
missionaries was in complete contradiction to the one it held
towards religious organizations on the Continent. The Republic
was radically antireligious, but it encouraged missionary worlc
abroad. )esufti out:-bf-Fra!ice.t.nce,
but'dunttj the, iame: .. pcnoa
he!!Uy! !tltetr:wcrrk aOrOad;'particulady fnltebanon.f
The was simple: Even with the subsidies, missions cost
less t4in public
teacliers 'C:iU:Heeallie they tended' td
th . wrlced: s 'atcin the'la1i-
. .. @@f?tJijiioplehelped.them :1nvert
primarygoalt In effect, they applied
Jean Dard's mutual
mission: Fiehe:b: itate-. .Upported
tbi;;t;icc tn fctumf f.v
bf:!\heyaserc;f;imoerialism, its project to civilize, tN
of tlie'lOie missionariet
V# .
III encouraged Catholic missions AJc
in tl!e Pacific ialands in order to counteract Anglo-American
colonial expansion. The missions played a crucial role in the Vf
Pacific Oceatl, especially in Polynesia. Missionaries arrived in ,u
the Pacific islands of Wallis and Fortuna in the I8JOS, fifty
years before France laid claim to them. In the decades that
followed, Catholic missions were established in Tonga and
New Caledonia. The French missionaries were in a hurry, since
Protestant English missionaries were already well-established in
the Pacific, notably in Hawaii, Tahiti and New Zealand. By 1854
there were already n'7 Catholic missionaries in the Polynesian
islands, and soon French Protestant missionaries joined the
e
lO' Till STOI.Y Or ra&HCII
.
fray-which is why France today still controls the largest section
of the Pacific Ocean.
According to Professor the total
number of children in mission scllools in all of Africa was
almost equal to all those in government schools. In Africa, le
Levant (the Middle East) and Indochina, missionaries ran
thousands of schools. In the Ottoman Enipire alone, one hun
dred thousand students were enrolled in French missionary
schools by 1900. The Belgians relied almost entirely on mis
sionaries. When he was private! owner of the Congo basin, King
Leopold II paid Catholic missionaries to go Africa and open
schools. The Belgian maintained the same
approach when it took over the country in .1,9o8; Belgian
Roman Catholic mission schools were given generous subsidies
to continue their work. By 1.910 some 18$,000 children were
studying in Catholic and Protestant missions, but fewer than
1,000 were in state schools.
Missionaries were not effective everywhere, thoug]l.
European missionary pre.sence in Indonesia began in the seven-
teenth century when the French tried, without success, to estab-
lish spice trading. The missionaries transcribed the Vietnamese
language into the Latin alphabet (chapter 14 shows how this
writing system would feed anti-French nationalism). But as in
t Algeria, the teaching of French faced several
. Indochina had a strong

1
French airived; and 'that .made
French schoels.r'AliO u : in
, --1, bought the idea: 'that the
1)1 They already. had The French implanted an educa
1 tion system in IndcJuna in 1.919, but neither the missionaries
"'' .
nor the French state could overcome resistance.
Another rn
ever 1.937 there were thirty thousand French
TOOL rot. All l WPI I.l 107
inhabitants in a population of twelve million, and half of
them were soldiers. A great number of the rest were teachers
and their families. The French writer Marguerite Duras was a
daughter of one. Her famous novel L'amant (The LAwr), which
was made into an excellent film, tells the story of her torrid
relationship with an lwlul in the waning days of France's
dominion over Indochina.
,
'iJf.:Alscria,-:.indi,enout!:merchanta .and. funci

Govemor General Paul Doumer (1897-1.901),
considered the of French Indochina, reinforced an
aggressive French administration. His policy pushed people to
learn French so they could deal with the administration,
though Doumer'a action later provoked resentment and fos-
tered the rebellion that would lead to Indochina's independ
,ence In the 1,9JOS, one in ten Indochinese was
bilingual;. most were concentrated in the cities. Some famous
francophone Indochinese people include Ho Chi Minh, Pol
Pot and Norodom Sihanouk. A pid.gm of Tay
'' .. d-"': ... ,
..
The .Jituation of in Syria; and more particularly ....
Lebanon; was a mirror image of Indochina. ln 1.919 IV"
-Greater Syria became a protectorate of rather than of
Britain, largely because French had made progress v
there over the centuries. In a way, France's colonial expansion
.had started in Syria.
when. MaroiiiteiCllristians. m
In thd
"ltrUclc/ l ''deai: ,;rlth th'

, Bmpi-1
_.....,
108 TKl ITOU Of fUMCH
this is partly why the Greeks remain strong francophiles to this
day. French missionaries began working in Syria in the seven
teenth century, and in 1816 France' forced the Ottoman Turks
to set up an autonomous territory for the Maronites in Mount
Lebanon, laying the groundwork for the creation Lebanon
in 1943.
Throughout the nineteenth century France increased its.
commercial relations with the railway line between
Jaffa and Jerusalem and the digging of the Suez: Canal between
1854 and 1869 were among the rhost spectacular of those efforts.
By mid-century, French was being taught along with English at
the College Maronite Romain in a modem program.
At the end of the nineteenth century a dozen French congrega
tions taught seven thousand- students. in some fifty schools.
With funding from the French in 1875 French
Jesuit priests opened the Saint Joseph University in Beirut,
where they ran schools of medicine, engineering and law before
the French Protectorate was established.
When t\le Ottoman Empire collapsed at the end of the
First World War, the area was placed under the military admin
istration of the Allies.
ous candidate for getting
;
1
...; ... .J'
1

msptred by the aYilwng". ..
,1'4,..( century
_J independence; thouah'!the .
than expected. 'At; the
ence in 'sight=; OiiiJtian
is now Lebiiion;buffeued

state of Lebanon . thaf.would' ..pve
1i
' li S'd .. . 'd. .. . . . . in:th ,,.)\ ...
npo , l on, ..
1
.':' an some.ateaS . ,,...l"'n
Syria into two iil x943;

TOOL roa All UIPial 1 0 ,


!1i 'Th ... ... - ''""'"' ... , . ....

da)f .tile protectoratt, .'u
throughout .flo
wert. ofttn .iouglit u iriiddleuied,. f..
the Briti.th .Briip1te'.zelied on lndim
brought the setr
In Senegal at the tinie of ind.e-
they numf?ered more than seventy thousand, and
olonies they outnumbered the European settlers . .

sprea'd across the planet: Famous'!'
f.;,lnembers include the U.S. activist Ralph Nader, the Canadian:..;.
Angelil, manager and of pop singer
and Carlos G.osn, a Braz:tltan-bom Lebanese who 1s
of Renault-Nusan.
When we \'Uited Senegal in May lOO.f, our hotel in cen
tral Dakar was directly across the street from the Mission
Libanaise (Lebanese Mission). To get a better understanding of
the community, we met with Samir Jarmarche, an energetic
businessman and head of the local Lebanese cultural organiza
tion ... Jarmarc:he showed us his scrapbook of pictures of his
family, who were part of the wave of Lebanese immi-
to Senesal. His father was actually on his way to
America in the 19101 when, as Jarmarche put it, fortunately or
unfortunately the boat atopped in Dakar, he met some people
from his village: and ended up staying in Senegal.
The Lebanese had first come to Senegal in the t88os,
when they were fleeing the Ottoman Empire. In Senegal, as
in all the Prenc:h colonies, they ran textile and furniture facto-
ries, real euate and grocery businesses. They also reinforced
the French presence in the country's interior by operating
.
110 Till STOIY OJ 'IIIICII
peanut factories and depots where the French rarely went. The
most successful opened businesses in other parts of French
West Africa, and their families are spread today over the entire
area. In fact,
African richest of the'
Lebanese Senegalese, the Shararah family, run businesses in
every country of former French West Africa.
In 1948 Senegal's Lebanese community opened a Lebanese
mission in Dakar to school children in French and Arabic and
to maintain their religion,' the Ma,ronite faith. The mission
became the backbone of the community. Since Senegalese inde-
pendence, however, the Lebanese population has dropped from
seventy thousand to twenty thousand. Although most Senegal-
born Lebanese speak Wolof and Arabic, relations between the
Lebanese and the Senegalese are not always harmonious. The
Lebanese continue to educate their children in French and
rarely intermarry with the Senegalese. The Senegalese are criti-
cal of this, and hotly contest the huge role the Lebanese still
play in Senegal's economy. But ilie complex heritage of French
colonialism has given the Lebanese a triple identity that will
probably last for many to come. As Mr. Jarmarche
told us, I am French, I am Lebanese. and I am Senegalese, and
this is my home." . .

aoal of
manage'.to' create &"solid
colonie. In a few areas, like Syria, .newly independent states
quickly adopted aggressive anti;French policies that would
virtually wipe this base out:
colonies FrenCh
)tad
In the meantime, French spciakers in France's first colonial
empire in North America were aggressive assimilation

TOOL JOI AM IMPI I& 111
efforts by Britisli, Canadian and American authorities. Against
all odds, the of this dynamic French-spea.lcing Lost
World found ways to survive.
....